JANUARY 18 marked the fourth anniversary of Arsenal winning away at one of their Big Six rivals in the Premier League. A Santi Cazorla-inspired 2-0 victory against a Manchester City side featuring Frank Lampard as a second-half substitute was a welcome result for Arsene Wenger but it was the falsest of dawns, coming a season after they had conceded a combined 17 goals in their three away games at the Etihad, Anfield and Stamford Bridge.

The 2015 City win was heralded as Arsenal turning the corner, but instead, they’ve gone on their longest winless run in the league at those five clubs since the 1960s.

This, remember, is a club who have gone an entire season unbeaten away from home not once but twice in the Premier League era, a club who won league titles with wins at Old Trafford and White Hart Lane. Once Arsenal relished the challenge of going away to their peers but their last win at Manchester United was in 2006, their last win at Stamford Bridge was in 2011 and their last win away to Tottenham was when their great rivals were managed by Tim Sherwood.

And it’s not as if these teams are impregnable at home. Study the list of away wins at the Big Six since Arsenal last managed it and you can see Crystal Palace with six victories (three under Alan Pardew, two under Sam Allardyce and Roy Hodgson’s sensational win at City a few weeks ago). Leicester have done it three times, as have Southampton, Swansea and West Ham. Even the likes of Aston Villa and Norwich, who haven’t even played in the top-flight for three years, have won league games away to the Big Six more recently than Arsenal.

Looking more closely at the 20 winless games, they naturally contain a mixture of deserved thumpings and times where Arsenal have been genuinely unlucky. Based on Expected Goals difference (ie xG for minus xG against) the 3-3 draw at Anfield in January 2016 is the closest they came to winning, ending the match +0.89 up on Liverpool. “"We had a difficult start. At 3-2, we should have made it 4-2 and didn't make the right decision in the final third”, Arsene Wenger said afterwards. The away game at Chelsea earlier this season is another that got away, with Arsenal looking very impressive going forwards in the first half, before Unai Emery, in his second game, played it cautiously after the break, ultimately allowing Chelsea to go on and win the game.

At the other end of the scale, two of the three worst differentials have come against Jurgen Klopp at Anfield, including the 5-1 thrashing at Christmas this season. The biggest trouncing, though, in terms of the balance of play if not the final scoreline, was the final match Arsenal played at the old White Hart Lane in April 2017. Tottenham won 2-0 but Petr Cech made nine saves as the home side battered Wenger’s team and ensured they’d finish a league season above the Gunners for the first time since 1995. It was a symbolic moment for both sides and in large part down to the fact that Arsenal have forgotten how to win away at their rivals.

On Sunday, Arsenal face a Manchester City reeling from their defeat at Newcastle on Tuesday. Once the idea of facing Arsenal in the next match would have heaped fear on top of woe, but the truth is the reigning champions could not have wished for a better game to restart their title challenge with. And until Arsenal can find a way of winning their biggest away games, it will be clubs like City and Liverpool who contest league titles rather than them.